Germany, May 8, 1945

In 1989, nearly 120 years after the first unification, Germany reunited. Its economy, surging before and continuing to surge after reunification, is today the leading power in Europe, particularly now that Britain has left the European Union. Germany has learned from its past. Its strategy is not to maintain military force. It searched to find a basis for working with the Soviets. Its historic competitor, Britain, is out of the EU, and the economic alliance of which it is only one member pivots around German economic power. Germany has sought to avoid the threat of war while dominating Europe by making certain that Russia is not hostile and that France doesn’t seek alliance with it.

Some 76 years after its surrender, Germany is again the economic pivot of Europe and the fourth-largest economy in the world. It underestimates no one, but the truth is that no one underestimates Germany. Britain has seceded from the German-led union. Russia courts Germany, and the Germans have mastered coyness. France searches for its place in the sun, which is often blocked by Germany. And the United States lurks in the distance happily indifferent to Europe’s problems.

Each had a mortal fear of the other. Now each has mild unease. And geopolitics is not shaped by good intentions, of which there are many. May 8, 1945, was certainly a comma in history. It remains to be seen if it was a period.